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February 2013 mapping challenge entry: flooded city

the idea is a river-side city that was recently flooded. I'm going to map the city itself first (as the wip below shows) and then add flood markers to show where the highest extent of flood-waters reached. I'm quite pleased with the results so far, though there's a while yet to go...

here's some minor progress on the map - I've fiddled with the streets and blocks a bit to make them a bit better-looking (thanks to the my use of non-destructive techniques like i can very easily and quickly change the street and block layout to suit my fancy), and started adding street-names. most importantly (to the challenge) I've mapped the flooded streets in a green hatched overlay. i'll likelyt add a key to make things clearer, though i dont imagine this will be a word-intense map.

a small update on the map. ive added a title and some space below the map itself for text and a regional inset, though I feel as though I've hit a snag. is this enough flooding for the subject matter? it's quite subtle, just a few streets throughout the map. perhaps more flooding?

think this one is close to finished now. it's my first city-mapping attempt and, truth be told, i probably spent more time on the city itself (playing around with names and the street shapes) than i did with the actual flooding, and i'm still not sure the areas of flooding are distinct-enough from the river itself. I'll probably change the text as I came up with this in a few minutes, so it can probably be better.

Some great job overall and very nice colour tone. I like how you distorded the text on the paper folds. The way water stops in flooded streets is maybe a bit too harsh though (but maybe there's an explanation of it)

Some great job overall and very nice colour tone. I like how you distorded the text on the paper folds. The way water stops in flooded streets is maybe a bit too harsh though (but maybe there's an explanation of it)

i was thinking about that myself. In the end i decided that the floodwaters would have receded by the time something like this could have been produced, so the waterline is more of an approximation based on the aftermath, discolouring of buildings from the water etc. though i still may change parts of it

I'm calling this one done. did very little to it since the last update. messed with hue and colour a bit and added some slight details to the inset map in the right corner.

### latest wip ###

though I'm not 100% happy with it (i was far more interested in my more personal maps I'm working on at the moment), I'm glad i entered as it made me try my hand at something I wouldnt otherwise have done, which I guess is the point of these maps. I really enjoyed coming up with the streets, thinking of their histories as i plotted them, and had fun filling roads up and knocking down buildings as the city evolved. I'd like to try a larger, more detailed version ,with complete street names and lists of individual buildings... but i have so much on my palte that it'll have to wait!